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Daniel Inouye 'lived and breathed the Senate'

The Senate lost one of the last of its legends Monday with the death of Sen. Daniel Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat who arrived a half-century ago as the complete Washington outsider yet grew to become central to the Capitol and even its soul.

Inouye’s quiet, restrained style led some to underestimate him. But he had a wit and shrewdness, too, combined with a record of genuine heroism and compassion for the underdog, having come of age amid discrimination against Japanese-Americans even as he served bravely in World War II.

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Reid remembers Sen. Inouye

“I have never known anyone like Dan Inouye. No one else has,” said Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in announcing his friend’s death on the floor. “A man who has lived and breathed the Senate. If there were ever a patriot, Dan Inouye was that patriot.”

At his death, Inouye was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and had earlier chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee when it was first formed in the 1970s. Indeed, the national security issues of defense, foreign aid and intelligence were central to his career, and he was one of the last of a generation of World War II veterans that once greatly influenced the chamber.

Both he and retired Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.) met famously at what was then the Percy Jones Army Hospital in Michigan, where they were both young men recovering from serious wounds. A third future senator, the late Philip Hart (D-Mich.), was also a patient and became their friend, and years later Dole would break into tears talking of that time and how much Inouye had meant to him.

“He’s a Democrat, and I’m a Republican, but parties didn’t make any difference,” Dole said in an interview with POLITICO. “He was wounded a week from the day I was and a mile from the place I was wounded, and we ended up in the same hospital. Danny weighed 93 pounds. He was the best bridge player in the hospital.”

As it worked out, Inouye would beat Dole to Congress, arriving in the House as Hawaii’s first congressman after it won statehood in 1959. In 1962, he won election to the Senate.

“We looked like people assembling at a morticians’ conference,” he would joke later, describing the sea of black and gray three-piece suits he found in the chamber. And Inouye had to wait more than two months to give his maiden speech, but when he did, 25 senators — a packed house by today’s standards — were there to hear him, including the Southern powerhouse Richard Russell.

Senator Dan Inouye. Those who speak of him use the same adjectives: honest, distinguished, civil, courageous, heroic, honorable, humble, respectful, dignified, and a great man. I hope he is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. He deserves that. That's where good soldiers go; and he was, a good soldier. We will miss this soldier, senator and man of the islands. Rest in Peace Senator Inouye. You deserve a good rest. Your work is done. You've done your duty for yourself, your family and the people of Hawaii and the nation.

RD53....Why am I not surprised that you are a Conservative. Only your type would be so vile as to call to question a Medal of Honor winner. You people have no regard for the heroism this WWII soldier gave to our nation. You enjoy your freedoms because of people like the Senator who fought for those rights; but I suppose you probably hate the military or you are to young to know what nationalism is all about. Go hide behind a bush and ambush someone else. You're too much of a coward to recognize someone who served this nation with honor. Honor is not a word you conservatives live by.